Renew levy to support fingerprint system

King County voters should approve the $120 million six-year levy to support the Automated Fingerprint Identification System. Jesse Ryan Gonzales is the reason why.

At some point when he was in the bedroom of a 12-year-old girl he raped in December 2011, he put his hand down on the glass surface of a vanity. The palm print left behind was compared with 350,000 others in the system’s databases and it matched one taken from Gonzales after a 2006 arrest. He was arrested within four days of the rape.

Dan Satterberg, King County prosecuting attorney, said the arrest would not have been made so quickly without AFIS, which had been updated in March 2011 to match palm prints as well as fingerprints.

By approving the renewal levy on the Nov. 6 ballot, voters would authorize a property tax rate of 5.92 cents per $1,000 of assessed value for a six-year period starting in 2013. It would cost the owner of a $350,000 home about $20 a year.